


Clan Fett's Sigil

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Boba Fett - Freeform, Gen, drabble-ish, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 06:01:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16927803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: Just why does Boba wear the sigil on his armor, when Jango never did? A short, introspective look at Boba's choice, his family, and his life.





	Clan Fett's Sigil

No one ever told him he’d have free time. Jango had prepared him for so much of the job, and Aurra had filled in what had been missing (at least in the way of the learn-the-bounty-hunting-business topics. She’d been worse than bantha shit at the stuff he still doesn’t know about. Stuff like how to pretend to be normal when he’s incognito in a cantina. Or what to do when he’s got a cold and he’s stuck on a stakeout on a literal asteroid)

Which is exactly where he is.

His fever has so far proved resistant to everything he keeps in his med kit, and his cough makes his recently-broken-and-patched together ribs ache.

Everything aches, if he lets himself admit it. What had started as a headache, two weeks ago, has spun out of control, like a ship in free-fall, into this mess. He’ll have to find a medical bay, somewhere.

After this mission.

His own health always came second to the mission.

Because while he was on mission, he had a purpose. And while he had a purpose, he felt like he understood why he was still alive. Why he existed, in the first place.

Because if it wasn’t for his work, for the legacy he was slowly building, bounty by bounty, body by body, no one in the entire universe would know he existed. Even his dad’s old friends probably thought he was long dead.

If he could call those tough old barves friends of Jango’s. Maybe work associates, instead. Like him and Bossak. Would that scaly bastard notice if Boba dropped dead from this fierfeking illness? Probably not. Death was common in their line  of work. In fact, it was their line of work.

Because he had nothing better to do, and every bit of movement hurt, Boba surrendered to the call of his small bunk, for once. Normally on a stake-out mission he slept in a chair, which was easier to leap out of when the sensors went off. But given his general condition, he didn’t think he was going to be leaping anywhere.

The holopad lay next to his bunk, and he grabbed it one handedly. Closing his eyes just made his ache all the more apparent, so he’d have to find something to distract himself. Maybe some research on the stakeout target (as if he hadn’t already read everything) or brush up on his Festian (because there was a very nice bounty on a certain rebel spy from that planet, and Boba planned to take it… once he got better.)

Instead, he ended up searching through old records, planetary censuses and datafiles, for his father’s name. A stupid pastime. He knew his father’s history as well as his own. The farm. The burnt earth. Jaster. The betrayal. Jango’s life was punctuated with loss, once every era. Boba’s, instead, had one great loss, dividing his life forever into before and after. He’d never return to that before anymore than Jango could have gone back to the farm.

But somewhere deep in the records, Boba stumbled across something interesting. An old, old sigil. A stalk of wheat, a letter. A tear? No. Nonsense. Mandalorians didn’t cry. Must be a blood drop. Or water, to grow the wheat. That made the most sense.

Boba fell asleep with one hand still resting on that small symbol. And when he slept, he dreamed of it painted on countless chest plates of armor, stretching out like stars on the jump to hyperspace, rows of family members he’d never meet, uncles and aunts and grandparents lost to the past. Warriors. All of them. Warriors and farmers when there was no need to fight. Because they were survivors, the Fetts.

And they were his family. Far more than the other clones ever would be. He might share DNA with every white-helmeted lackey on every now-Imperial ship, but they weren’t his family. Blood didn’t make a family. Jango had said that. Jaster had been family to Jango. Family by choice. And Jango had chosen Boba. Picked him. Raised him.

Family by choice.

Boba chose, then, to let himself have a family too. Not anyone still living. Not anyone who could be used as leverage against him or killed in front of him. But a family, all the same. People who watched over him, while he lay there, on that small bunk, somewhere in the deep recesses of space. 

A drop of blood, a stalk of wheat, a letter. It's enough for him. It's a sigil of survival, and he's a survivor. And always will be.

* * *

 

Years later, Bossak and Boba work together on a mission, a simple tag and bag one. There was a bit of a scuffle, but they’re old pros at firefights now. While they clean up the blood splatters, Bossak nods at Boba’s chest. He’s busy wiping off a splatter. “Never asked,” Bossak hisses the word. “Bout that. The circle.”

“It’s an old Mando thing,” Boba shrugs, as if it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t, to anyone but him. Pretends he wasn't the one who painted it on, and pretends he wouldn't care if it flaked off his armor. He doesn't have the energy to fix a dented helmet, but the sigil of clan Fett is always emblazoned in crisp paint on his chest. He doesn't put it over his heart, because he's not that kriffing sentimental, and beside, he'd rather like to forget the fact he has a heart, but it's on his armor all the same. He's not one to go back on any choice he's made, even if it came from a fever dream. Not that he'll admit any of that to his sometimes co-worker in the business. He doesn't admit anything to anyone these days. “Came with the armor. From Jaster Mereel’s family.”

He knows whispers say he is Jaster, that he’s lived more than one lifetime, and saying that to a known gossip like Bossak will only fuel the rumors. Good. Keeps him safer that way. The only person who needs to know what that sigil represents is Boba.

Well. Him, and the rest of his family, watching him, somewhere beyond the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you SO MUCH to the amazing RebelBounty Discord who started this discussion and let me run with it!


End file.
